Truth: email is my Achilles heel.
So lest you think that with all the emphasis on planning, focus and productivity that I am perfect at staying organized, you would be wrong.
Email takes me down.
I have never been especially good with email. I break a lot of the email best practice rules like “don’t use your inbox as a to-do list” and “only process once.” I have a habit of thinking I’ve responded to something (because I have in my head) only to find that I haven’t actually hit send on my thoughts. I easily let the number of emails creep up in my inbox only to whittle it down once I start having heart palpitations.
So I find it laughably ironic that I’m writing this post on email inbox hacks and management. Although then again, I’m probably the best person to write it because if these hacks work for me, they’re likely to work for anyone!
I love a good hack and I love a good app or tech tool even more.
I’ve compiled five of my favourites for email, and my advice is to just give a few a try and see what works for you.
Note: a few of these hacks are likely Gmail-specific. I use Google Apps to run my business email through and love it. If you don’t use gmail for email processing, some of these might not work.
Inbox Pause
If you struggle with email management like me, then you likely have windows of time where you try to read and respond to as many as you can in an effort to reduce your email count. This is great until you refresh and five new ones have popped back to the top. That’s where Inbox Pause is helpful. You simply press it and then all new emails will be held until you’re ready for them.
This is also a fabulous button to press when you’re in the middle of your CEO Time — distraction-free work can be yours!
Boomerang
I love Boomerang. I use this tool when I still require a response from someone that a) I don’t want to forget about if I don’t hear from them, and b) I don’t want to keep in my inbox. Simply choose when you want the message to return to your inbox (e.g. 5 days if nobody replies) and *poof* – out of your inbox it goes until the appointed time.
Follow Up Then is another option and works on other platforms besides Gmail.
Wisestamp
I wouldn’t really call Wisestamp a hack per se, but I love it enough to include on this list. Wisestamp allows you to create professional, attractive email signatures with live links to everything from your favourite social platforms to blog posts to a meeting scheduler. You can also create a personal and a business signature depending on the contents of your email.
Here’s a picture of a few of my email hacks in action:
Unroll.me
This is a huge distraction and procrastination-saver.
While I do have a totally separate gmail account for any newsletter subscriptions (do this — so helpful!!), it’s nearly impossible to avoid having some non-urgent emails flow through your main inbox. Because I use my main email address for things like online purchases, social media platforms, technology and tool sign-up etc, I need something that will move these non-actionable emails out of my inbox quickly.
This is where Unroll.me is so helpful. You simply decide which types of emails you don’t need to see regularly and it sends them straight to a separate folder. Then, at the end of the day, you get ONE email (not 25) that has a digest of everything that went into the folder, and from there you can process. It also has a handy one-click unsubscribe feature, making it easy to reduce any non-necessary emails.
CloudMagic
Last, but not least, is CloudMagic. This is the email app I use on my iPhone (it works with Android too). It’s a sleek, attractive app – but what I love most about it is that it integrates with some other business apps I use daily.
For example, rather than just storing emails in folders, I can save them straight to Evernote for reference (my love for Evernote knows no bounds), to Pocket if it’s something interesting I want to read later, or to Asana if I want to action it as a task. (It also works with Zendesk, Salesforce, Trello, Mailchimp and OneNote).
Anytime I can move something out of my inbox and into the place it actually belongs, I’m happy. And CloudMagic does the job.
Do you have an email hack you love? Jump over to my Facebook page and let me know or hit me up on Twitter. I’m always open to trying something new!
